


Awakened Yearning and the Aftermath

by raspberryghoulaid



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Community - Freeform, Coping, M/M, Sad Ending, Trobed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26486722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryghoulaid/pseuds/raspberryghoulaid
Summary: Abed learns to cope with Troy's abscence, or rather, tries to. Sometimes, however, there are times when Abed doesn't want to play make believe, and Annie is always there to catch him when he falls.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 14
Kudos: 43





	Awakened Yearning and the Aftermath

Abed doesn’t come out of his bedroom much anymore. Paper cups litter the ground, brims stained with sticky brown liquid, and stacks of bowls form towers that cover almost every available surface. He takes his classes online now, watches cartoons alone most nights and tries to keep himself from spiraling. His collection of _Inspector Spacetime_ dvds remain untouched in his bookcase, a coating of dust enveloping the shiny plastic cases. He hasn’t touched them since it happened. Can’t bring himself to relive the memories.

At some point, Annie’s stopped knocking, and Jeff and Britta must’ve grown tired of the sound of his voicemail, because his phone isn’t ringing every day anymore. His diet consists almost exclusively of buttered noodles and expired cans of soda pop, because Shirley doesn’t come over to drop off food for them anymore and Annie is out most nights anyway, either grabbing dinner for herself or meeting up with the rest of the study group. Abed isn’t invited, doesn’t try to be. They aren’t complete anymore, and he’s the only one who cares about it. It’d been so easy for them to let _you-know-who_ slip through their fingers and be happy with that, with letting him go. Abed could pretend to be, for him, but eventually the weight of it all caught up to him and now he was here. Alone. All of his character development unraveled by a single thread attached to something that was already far out of reach.

He remembers crying when his mom left. Remembers the tears that stained his cheeks and caused a look of shock on his dad’s face who, apparently, never realized his weird son could express emotion. It didn’t help his case, he was still sent to a series of psychiatrists who all claimed to know what was “wrong” with him but only aimed to stick a bandage over the situation and call it a day.

Crying never really became an option after that; he told himself that every time he could feel the way his chest tightened or his throat closed up. He tells himself that now, when his hands begin to tremble as he presses them against his eyes, believing he can hold back his tears if he tries hard enough. It doesn’t work. He hiccups, and against his will he can feel that same familiar feeling he felt all those years ago on the floor of his childhood bedroom, his mother’s hands leaving his face as she disappears from his sight and, ultimately, his life. She doesn’t come back to soothe him like she always does, and his dad makes no attempts to console him, so he sits and cries all night on that crappy carpet. It’s the last time he’d lost something, someone as monumental as this, and the near decade of resilience he’s built because of it begins to crumble.

To combat it, he begins to piece together a better ending for his story. In his ending, his mom never leaves, and he never has to face the realization that he did this to them. In Abed’s ending, he’s still on the crappy carpet, and his mom’s hands are still cupping his face, but there are no tears to wipe away. Instead, she’s smiling at him, and his dad isn’t looking at him with the usual layer of disappointment.

On instinct, Abed reaches to cover his mother’s hands within his own, wanting to feel her touch one last time before the vision fades and he’s left with empty noodle bowls and an inbox of unread text messages. When he comes into contact, the tenderness of her skin against his is alarmingly real, and Abed is pulled from the illusion in a heartbeat. Before he can register it, the darkness of his bedroom envelopes him again and-Annie. She’s here, and the warmth he feels on his skin is her, her fingers splayed out against his cheek, her eyes searching his as he collapses into her arms without hesitance.

“Oh, Abed,” She whispers, cradling him carefully. “I miss him, too.”

They sit like that until the last of the tears have died in his throat, until Abed can breath again and he can finally drag himself back into reality enough to respond to her touch, wrapping his arms around her and grounding himself on the feeling of her sweater rubbing against his skin. He needed her more than he cared to admit. “What did it feel like?” His words get stuck in his throat, coming out in pieces. Annie shifts her position so she’s meeting his gaze, and there’s confusion in the quirk of her brow.

“What did what feel like, Abed?”

Abed swallows, blinks away the last lingering drops of tears from his eyelids and averts her gaze. “What did it feel like when you realized you had feelings for him?” His shoulders tense, and he hangs his head, mentally preparing himself for the onslaught of ridicule and judgement. He’s thrust back to the first time he’d been questioned by his father about his relationship with his best friend, the voice that had screamed in his ear and the hands that had shaken him, all for saying _he thinks he found his soulmate_. He hadn’t even meant it romantically; all of the books and movies had taught him that soulmates didn’t have to be romantic. It just had to be someone suited for you in every way, someone that loved you and accepted you and just _got_ you. No one had ever gotten Abed like Troy did.

He muffles the oncoming sob with the sleeve of his cardigan and feels Annie’s fingers weave through his hair. It soothes him, only slightly, and they fall into their old routine; when Abed was still convincing himself he was in the wrong timeline, and Annie had spent weeks familiarizing herself with all of the little things that comforted him, that brought him down from whatever cloud of dysphoria that’d tried to claim him that day.

“Not like this,” She whispers, her eyes softening as she looks at him. “Nothing like this.” She strokes his dark tresses gently, and although Abed’s never been too good at reading anybody, he manages to translate the empathy shining beyond her brown irises in a heartbeat. He cries into her shoulder until the last of the evening rays dissolve, and the tv eventually goes black with neglect. Abed says nothing, and Annie doesn’t ask him to. Gradually, the floor beneath him begins to chip and peel away, and the lava starts to rise.


End file.
